User talk:Anrahyah

Hi Anrahyah. Welcome to Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy participating in our community. With that said, I am afraid I have to offer some advice that will unavoidably be negative. I happen to be an educator myself, so I see that appeal of using Wikipedia as a teaching tool. We have even had in-service presentations to that effect. However I must caution you about using Wikipedia in exactly the manner you and your students are now doing. Wikipedia is first and foremost an encyclopedia which aspires to the highest standards. Hence content contributed "by kids and for kids" is not usually appropriate, and will be edited severely, and most likely deleted entirely. (The problem is not specifically that it is by kids: it is that, so far, it is almost completely non-encyclopedic content. See What Wikipedia is not, for example. Also, even content that is appropriate will be drastically edited, perhaps out of all recognition.)

This editing/deletion may come very quickly, without warning, and without much regard for the feelings of the kids; an editor may simply see it as inappropriate content and revert the edits. As the warning at the bottom of the editing page says, "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly...do not submit it." I'm not sure what expectations your students have about their contributions lasting on the page, but if they expect them to last more than a few days---perhaps hours---they will be very disappointed.

There may be other user-editable ("wiki-type") sites that are more geared for kids' contributions, and that would be more appropriate for this kind of project. But Wikipedia is not the place for these contributions, I'm sorry to say. If you have questions or concerns, you can respond here or at my talk page. I will also leave a note at Talk:San Luis Valley. Reading the help pages is also a great idea. -- Spireguy 22:24, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I live in Crestone and appreciate your efforts. However, here's the deal: while children are welcome, they are welcome as participants in the work we do and are held to the same standards as other editors. Creation of a section "by kids and for kids" is inappropriate. Looking at the work your students did on the article San Luis Valley [1] it almost uniformly of very low quality, kid's reports on field trips, not on significant features of the San Luis Valley. There were also difficulties in formatting. If you leave a space at the beginning of a line, it causes the text to display in indented boxes.

The article does need significant work. There is little about the history of the valley. Right next door to your school at the library is an extensive run of the San Luis Valley Historian which can be used as a source to greatly improve the article. Adams State College is not mentioned in the current article, nor are the wildlife refuges. Some of the items the kids reference are notable, some, not at all. Petrographs and the wildlife refuges are notable, a bed and breakfast or a cafe is not.

I hope you and your students continue editing, but please don't make a section as you did. Fred Bauder 12:51, 14 June 2007 (UTC)